WordPress 2.7: Coming Soon

October 21, 2008

Jen Mylo

As you may know, we’ve been working behind the scenes on the design and development of version 2.7 of the WordPress software that powers your blog. The administration interface you’re used to will be changing as a result of your feedback and the results of the usability testing we conducted over the summer. Version 2.7 is due to release officially on November 10 (Update: at the end of November), but in the meantime, we’re posting sneak previews of the look and functionality to come. So far we’ve covered the new navigation system and the new Dashboard. If you want to get an early idea of what you can expect come November, head over to the WordPress.org blog and check out The Visual Design of 2.7 and The New 2.7 Dashboard.

We’ll be publishing more descriptions of how things will work over the next couple of weeks so that when the change comes it won’t be a complete surprise. We’re also working on new Help materials that you can use for reference (replacing FAQs, screencasts, etc.) while you adjust to the new structure. Overall, the response so far is that the new interface is easier to use, and that it’s faster to access the screens people use most, so hopefully once you’ve checked out the posts linked above, you’ll be as excited for the launch of 2.7 as we are.

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I am hoping that there will be many features on WordPress.com that I am missing from a standalone installation of WordPress; some more diverse widgets and the ability to at least choose some basic plug-ins would be amazing. I absolutely adored my blog posts automatically going onto my Twitter accounts.

cha chaa chaaaaa changes aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah too many too fast!
am still trying to grasp what the bleep “Intense Debate” is all about!
just as i catch up there’s another change
pls slow down a tad will you!

hoh: We keep making changes because we are always improving the application based on user feedback. Look on the bright side: since your blog is here on wordpress.com, at least we do the upgrading for you! 🙂

Housam: I think the only new features that would affect themes are threading and paging of comments. We’ll be working to include options for those features in our themes, and the default and classic themes will support threaded comments out of the box. We hope to have the most popular themes (and hopefully all our themes) ready for threaded comments before launch, but if there are any we haven’t been able to update yet, you’ll have the choice of using traditional chronological comment styles instead of the new threaded option. In fact, threading and paging are turned OFF by default, so if you don’t turn these new features on manually, you shouldn’t have any issues, even if your chosen theme isn’t ready to support the threading.

Hello, Princess. AdSense is still on our radar as a potential upgrade, but it won’t be a part of the 2.7 administration redesign. Sorry I don’t have the answer you were hoping for, but hopefully there will be other 2.7 goodness to make you happy in the meantime.

1) I would expect an in improvement in cache to speed things up while posting etc.
2) I would like to see a robust and fully functional stat package which tracks IPs by region, area and locaiton
3) I would like to see comment managemnet as good as posting a page. Improved banning (though one can still do this), deleting, archiving of posts and comments would be great.
4) Most importantly I would like to see “Content Management”, Index Page, or Table of Content Management so that older posts are accessable.This would hugely increase traffic for our site and for WordPress
5) I would like to see google search for the site as a widget.
6) I would like to see better search then the one we have. The current search does not give us good access. The search in the dashboard in “manage” is the best one we have and that is not available to the users.
7) I would expect to see WordPress include 3rd party plugins/widgets at the click of a button.
8) Interface between design/widgets and IE explorer leaves much to be desired and is major weakness. I have to use Safari to copy and paste widgets becuase IE just wont do it.
9) Tracking origins of comments is very important to me as is managing traffic. Stats are good, but we need more info on where the stats are coming from. LiveStats, ShinySats etc help us a lot. Wish they were past of WordPress.
10) Improved email access by sitename. We should be able to see email sent to the site on the dashboard. “Letters to the Editor” feature would help a lot–more than the comments.
11) Automatic hookup to “forums” or google/yahoo groups should be great.

I LOVE WORDPRESSS…undoubtedly, it is the best bloggin system around…no questions on this

Moin Ansari:
1) We’re working on caching issues. In the meantime, we recommend using Google Gears (click the Turbo link in the upper right hand corner of your admin panel).
2) The wordpress.com stats plugin is undergoing revision currently and will be launching a new version soon.
3) Various new comment management features, including threading, paging and direct reply will be part of 2.7.
4) You can use Categories to create a table of contents. Lorelle VanFossen makes a good analogy: categories are your table of contents, tags are your index.
5) No plans for Google search as yet.
6) No changes to search for 2.7. Possibly in 2.8.
7) WordPress.com has extra security measures in place to keep your blogs safe, which is why all third-party widgets must be vetted and approved by Automattic.
8 ) There are many reasons not to use IE. In any case, widget management will be redone in 2.8.
9) If you submit a more specific request about which types of data you would find useful, we can consider it for future stats upgrades. Suggestions can be sent to support@wordpress.com.
10) WordPress.com does not offer an email server to its members. If you want a generic “letters to the editor” instead of comments on a specific post, I’d suggest creating a page for this purpose, since pages can also receive comments.
11) BuddyPress is due to be released in December. Keep your eyes open for possible integration in the new year.

Game Dame and stickmasta: the links in the post above go to long posts that describe quite a few of the features in 2.7. More posts over the next two weeks will describe the rest of the coming features, including things like comment threading.